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Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Practical Understandings

Article in Modern Language Journal · December 1999

DOI: 10.1111/0026-7902.00037 · Source: OAI

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Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT): Practical Understandings
KAZUYOSHI SATO ROBERT C. KLEINSASSER
Centre for Language Teaching and Research Centre for Language Teaching and Research
The University of Queensland The University of Queensland
Brisbane QLD 4072 Brisbane QLD 4072
Australia Australia
Email: yoshis@usiwakamaru.or.jp Email: robertk@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au

The aim of this article is to report on a study that documented the views and practices of
communicative language teaching (CLT) by Japanese second language inservice teachers.
Compared to theoretical developments of CLT (e.g., see Savignon, 1991), little is known
about what second language teachers actually understand by CLT and how they implement
CLT in classrooms. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and sur-
veys, the article reports how teachers defined CLT and implemented it in their classrooms.
The study identified how teachers actually dealt with CLT in their classrooms teaching Japa-
nese. It is interesting to note that their views and actions dealt little with the academic
literature pertaining to CLT or their education (be it preservice or inservice) in learning
about CLT. Instead, teachers resorted to their personal ideas and experiences, solidifying
their notions of foreign language (L2) teaching in further pursuing their evolving concep-
tions of CLT.

EVER SINCE HYMES (1971) DISCUSSED THE
idea of communicative competence and Canale
and Swain (1980) considered its implications for
language teaching, communicative language
teaching (CLT) (Savignon, 1991) has achieved
prominence. Conference papers, articles, and
books abound that support and promote CLT. In
the main, scholars advance CLT by exploring its
meaning and use in classrooms. Writers consider
various facets and mutations of CLT, providing
valuable codification of CLT elements (e.g.,
Berns, 1990; Brown, 1994; Howatt, 1984; Little-
wood, 1981; Mitchell, 1988; Richards & Rodgers,
1986; Savignon, 1983, 1997; Savignon & Berns,
1984, 1987; Schulz & Bartz, 1975). Even within
the expanding literature concerning CLT, how-
ever, its meaning for practitioners receives scant
attention.
In this research project, we document second
language (Japanese) teachers’ CLT using their
perspectives.1 To set the stage for this investiga-
tion, we begin by defining CLT by using various
sources from academia and government policy to
highlight some of the numerous views from these
particular perspectives. We further include an
Australian context to help define CLT from a
policy perspective, while also allowing such infor-
mation to situate our study. We then explore the
relevance of teacher beliefs, knowledge, and
practices. Here we review CLT investigations and
highlight the complexity of understanding rela-
tionships among beliefs, knowledge, and prac-
tices. Inherent in such a presentation is the need
to explore change. This we do briefly, with the
discussion culminating in offering the research
questions. Our intent here is to argue for a theo-
retical base from language teachers’ perspectives.
We next outline the research methodology for
the project. This combined information positions
the presentation of our findings, followed by a
discussion of issues.

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

The Modern Language Journal, 83, iv, (1999)
0026-7902/99/494–517 $1.50/0 Savignon (1983, 1997) suggested that a class-
©1999 The Modern Language Journal
room model of communicative competence in-
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
cludes Canale and Swain’s (1980, later refined in
Canale, 1983) four components that are gram-
matical competence, sociolinguistic competence,
discourse competence, and strategic compe-
tence. She further proposed five components of
a communicative curriculum that include lan-
guage arts, language for a purpose, personal sec-
ond language (L2) use, theater arts, and beyond
the classroom (Savignon, 1983, 1997). These ele-
ments together help support both theoretical
and practical foundations for CLT. Yet, it is clear
that Savignon (1997) did not rely on these as the
sole arbitrator of CLT. In particular, with regard
to the four competences she concluded,
Whatever the relative importance of the various com-
ponents at any given level of overall proficiency, one
must keep in mind the interactive nature of their
relationships. The whole of communicative compe-
tence is always something other than the simple sum
of its parts. (p. 50)
The same could also be said about the five cur-
riculum components. Moreover, Savignon (1991)
cast an even wider net over what influences and
challenges the promotion of CLT:
CLT thus can be seen to derive from a multidiscipli-
nary perspective that includes, at least, linguistics,
psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational
research. The focus has been the elaboration and
implementation of program and methodologies that
promote the development of functional language
ability through learner participation in communica-
tive events. Central to CLT is the understanding of
language learning as both an educational and politi-
cal issue. (p. 265)
To be sure, there are other conceptualizations
of communicative competence and CLT. For in-
stance, Bachman (1990) charted a theoretical
framework for communicative language ability
that includes knowledge structures, strategic
competence, psychophysiological mechanisms,
context of situation, and language competence.
Language competence is further divided into or-
ganizational competence (grammatical and tex-
tual competences) and pragmatic competence
(illocutionary and sociolinguistic competences).
Brown (1994) proposed a definition of CLT to
include the following issues: (a) “Classroom goals
are focused on all of the components of commu-
nicative competence”; (b) “Language techniques
are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic,
authentic, functional use of language for mean-
ingful purposes”; (c) “Fluency and accuracy are
seen as complementary principles underlying
communicative techniques”; and (d) “students
ultimately have to use the language, productively
495
and receptively” (Brown, 1994, p. 245, italics
original). Richards and Rogers (1986) concluded
that
Communicative Language Teaching is best consid-
ered an approach rather than a method. Thus al-
though a reasonable degree of theoretical consis-
tency can be discerned at the levels of language and
learning theory, at the levels of design and procedure
there is much greater room for individual interpreta-
tion and variation than most methods permit. (p. 83)
These perspectives, among others, offer possibili-
ties of what CLT is, and their various authors give
ideas of what can transpire in a L2 classroom. Yet,
not all views of CLT are necessarily the domain of
academicians. As will be discussed next, national
and state initiatives give an additional view of
CLT.
To understand CLT in Australia better, we offer
an overview of this country’s recent (second) lan-
guage initiatives. The past 20 years in Australia
have been supportive of and exciting for the
teaching of foreign languages or Languages
Other Than English (LOTE), as they are pres-
ently called. Clyne, Jenkins, Chen, Tsokalidou,
and Wallner (1995) overviewed the latest initial
push regarding languages in Australia. They re-
ported that in 1976 the Committee on the Teach-
ing of Migrant Languages in Schools (CTMLS)
recommended that, starting in their primary
years, children be given opportunities to learn
other languages and understand other cultures.
They further relayed that a Senate report (1984)
on national language policy advocated principles
such as competence in English, maintenance and
development of languages other than English,
and opportunities for learning L2s. This report
eventually led to the National Policy on Lan-
guages (Lo Bianco, 1987) “which actually recom-
mended implementation strategies and govern-
ment spending in innovative areas which were
accepted by the federal government” (Clyne et
al., 1995, p. 6).
The development of students’ communicative
skills in L2s was emphasized around the same
time. The Australian Language Levels (ALL) Proj-
ect responded to the Senate (1984) and Lo Bi-
anco (1987) policies on languages and developed
curriculum ideas for the teaching of L2. Austra-
lian Language Levels (ALL) Guidelines (Scarino,
Vale, McKay, & Clark, 1988) were published and
subsequently Pocket ALL (Vale, Scarino, & McKay,
1991) was published as a handy teacher’s guide.
These guidelines included topics such as the eight
principles of language learning, the goals of lan-
guage learning, the table of language use, devel-
496
oping modules for a syllabus, resources, and as-
sessment. Each state followed ALL Guidelines and
developed and wrote language syllabi. The
Queensland Department of Education (1989),
for instance, promoted the five ALL goals for lan-
guage learning: a communication goal, a so-
ciocultural goal, a learning-how-to-learn goal, a
language and cultural awareness goal, and a
knowledge goal. Among these goals, emphasis was
placed upon communication: “Language-learn-
ing programs are aimed at the development of
communicative competency in a particular lan-
guage” (p. v). As a result, various LOTE syllabi
followed these general guidelines. The Japanese
Senior Syllabus, for example, referred to the pri-
mary objective by stating that “by the end of Year
12, learners should be able to communicate in
standard Japanese” (Board of Senior School Sec-
ondary Studies, 1995, p. 4). In addition, the six
assessment criteria tasks that LOTE teachers were
to implement included:
1. Assess the students’ ability to communicate in
the language.
2. Use authentic texts.
3. Give students the opportunity to speak and
write from their own experience.
4. Call for unrehearsed responses from the stu-
dent.
5. Allow students’ responses to be matched to
criteria and standards.
6. Provide informative feedback to students to
allow them to manage their own learning. (Board
of Senior Secondary School Studies, 1996, p. 1,
italics original)
These criteria follow the ALL Guidelines (Scarino
et al., 1988). In short, over the past 2 decades the
promotion of LOTE learning and the develop-
ment of LOTE students’ communicative skills
have been promoted vigorously in national and
state policy documents. LOTE teachers in schools
during the past decade have received either train-
ing or inservices in CLT because of the national
and state initiatives to develop students’ commu-
nicative abilities in LOTE. There is little insight,
however, into how LOTE (Japanese) teachers
perceive these views and implement these ideas.
There is also a dearth of information concerning
how LOTE teachers perceive the views of the
academicians. LOTE teachers’ beliefs, knowl-
edge, and practice of CLT remain somewhat of a
mystery in the CLT literature. Yet, as we will see
next, it is precisely teachers’ beliefs, knowledge,
and practice that need to be reviewed in order to
understand better just how CLT is understood by
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
LOTE teachers in L2 learning and teaching envi-
ronments.
SKETCHING A THEORETICAL BASE
We highlight the importance of teacher beliefs
in this project, for as Pajares (1992) acknowl-
edged in his synthesis of 35 empirical educational
investigations, “All teachers hold beliefs, however
defined and labeled, about their work, their stu-
dents, their subject matter, and their roles and
responsibilities” (p. 314). However, a variety of
conceptions of educational beliefs appears in the
literature.2 Citing Nespor’s (1987) influential
work, Pajares suggested that “beliefs are far more
influential than knowledge in determining how
individuals organize and define tasks and prob-
lems and are stronger predictors of behavior” (p.
311). Pajares promoted 16 “fundamental assump-
tions that may reasonably be made when initiat-
ing a study of teachers’ educational beliefs” (p.
324). These assumptions include, among others,
the notions that (a) beliefs are formed early and
tend to self-perpetuate; (b) some beliefs are more
incontrovertible than others; (c) beliefs about
teaching are well established by the time a stu-
dent gets to college; (d) changes in beliefs during
adulthood are rare; (e) beliefs are instrumental
in defining tasks and selecting the cognitive tools
with which to interpret, plan, and make decisions
regarding such tasks; (f) individuals’ beliefs
strongly affect their behavior; and (g) knowledge
and beliefs are inextricably intertwined (for com-
plete discussion of all 16 assumptions, see Pajares,
1992, pp. 324–326).
The tenuous relationship between beliefs and
knowledge creates a possible tension. Although
Pajares (1992) readily admitted that it is difficult
to distinguish knowledge from beliefs, he argued
Nespor’s (1987) point “that beliefs have stronger
affective and evaluative components than knowl-
edge and that affect typically operates inde-
pendently of the cognition associated with knowl-
edge” (p. 309). Richardson (1996) seemingly
agreed that although the distinction between be-
liefs and knowledge remains fuzzy, beliefs influ-
ence teaching practice more directly than knowl-
edge and that the “relationship between beliefs
and actions is interactive” (p. 104). Moreover,
Richardson (1994) assigned the teacher the role
of one who mediates ideas, constructs meaning
and knowledge, and acts upon those construc-
tions. She maintained that, in order to under-
stand how teachers make sense of teaching and
learning, one should focus on teachers’ beliefs
and practices. (Such a view appears to contrast
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
slightly with the view that teachers’ decision-mak-
ing is based upon knowledge and skills [e.g.,
Shulman, 1986, 1987]).
Regardless of theoretical stance, empirical
studies consistently reveal the difficulties of pro-
moting knowledge and skills that challenge or
contradict currently held beliefs and practices
(see, e.g., the reviews by Richardson, 1996, and
Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). In L2
teacher studies in general, there is definitely a
tendency for those studied to rely on their pre-
conceived beliefs, and there appears to be little
alteration in traditionally (form focus, teacher-
led) held images of L2 teaching (see, e.g,
Johnson, 1994; Lamb, 1995; Neustupny, 1981).
Nonetheless, studies that specifically single out
typical CLT also reveal glimpses of links among
beliefs, knowledge, and practices. On the one
hand, a few studies show little change in teacher
beliefs, knowledge, or practice, whereas, on the
other hand, a few studies reveal the possibility for
change in teacher beliefs, knowledge, or practice.
Thus, these studies provide evidence that the
challenges found in L2 teaching literature are
little different from the controversy in the wider
teaching literature. The extent to which teachers
can or will actually change is an issue within
teacher education, regardless of discipline.
For example, Thompson (1996) discovered
four misconceptions that were common among
his colleagues concerning the meaning of CLT:
(a) not teaching grammar, (b) teaching only
speaking, (c) completing pair work (i.e., role
play), and (d) expecting too much from teachers.
Thompson mentioned that a surprisingly large
number of teachers invoke erroneous reasoning
for criticizing or rejecting CLT. He concluded
that the future development of CLT depended
upon correcting these misconceptions. Fox
(1993) surveyed first-year French graduate teach-
ing assistants at 20 universities in the U.S. and
analyzed their responses according to the defini-
tions of communicative competence (CC) set
forth by Canale and Swain (1980). She reported
that teaching assistants did not conceptualize lan-
guage according to this particular model of CC.
Instead, the participants relied on grammar at
the expense of communicative activities. She con-
cluded that their beliefs about language teaching
and learning should be exposed so that they
could develop their beliefs and knowledge about
CLT.
Even teachers committed to CLT often seem to
show a very superficial adherence to CLT princi-
ples. As Nunan (1987) discovered, although the
teachers in his study had goals for communicative
497
classrooms, they offered students few opportuni-
ties for genuine communicative language use in
the class sessions that he recorded. Although the
lesson plans of these teachers might have con-
formed to the sorts of communicative principles
advocated in the CLT literature, the actual pat-
terns of classroom interaction resembled tradi-
tional patterns rather than what he identified as
genuine interaction. Karavas-Doukas (1996) re-
ported similar findings in the responses of 14
Greek teachers of English to an attitude survey
and in the observations she made of their class-
rooms. She found that the survey results leaned
toward agreement with CLT principles, but when
she observed the classroom teaching environ-
ments, “classroom practices (with very few excep-
tions) deviated considerably from the principles
of the communicative approach” (p. 193). Al-
though she acknowledged that there were
glimpses of communicative approaches, the
teachers in her sample favored traditional ones.
In this case, traditional meant, “Most lessons were
teacher-fronted and exhibited an explicit focus
on form” (p. 193).
As indicated earlier, not all of the news is bleak.
Okazaki (1996) completed a longitudinal study
using surveys to find out whether preservice
teachers changed their beliefs concerning CLT
after a 1-year methodology course. She con-
cluded that although beliefs of preservice teach-
ers were not easily swayed, some of them were
influenced in the desired direction by what Wen-
den (1991) called persuasive communication,
which aims at changing participants’ beliefs by
reflective teaching. For example, she reported
that the teachers’ emphasis increased on such
items as the learner’s role and decreased on such
items as pronunciation and error corrections. Ku-
maravadivelu (1993) studied two teachers whom
he identified as “‘believers’ in the CLT move-
ment” (p. 14), and who both had masters degrees
in ESL. With one teacher he promoted the effec-
tiveness of five macrostrategies for successful CLT
(see also Kumaravadivelu, 1992). He then tran-
scribed the two teachers’ classes and concluded
that the episodes showed “different kinds of class-
room input and interaction” (p. 18). One group
was motivated, enthusiastic, and active. The same
group in the second session was less motivated,
less enthusiastic, and much less active. Although
he identified session one as a speaking class, and
session two as a grammar class, he believed that
the use of the macrostrategies given to the
teacher in session one “contributed to this re-
markable variation in the communicative nature
of the two episodes” (p. 18). Regardless of the
498
theoretical and practical problems of such a
study, Kumaravadivelu (1993) claimed effective-
ness for strategy training with regard to teachers’
uses of CLT. In a study concerning L2 teaching in
more general terms, Freeman (1993) maintained
that four foreign language teachers (citing two
illustrations) changed their ideas about teaching
when they were introduced to the discourse of
current professional issues and notions.
In summary, the controversy in the teacher
change literature about teachers’ beliefs and
practices continues. As Richardson (1996) com-
mented:
Perhaps the greatest controversy in the teacher
change literature relates to the difficulty in changing
beliefs and practices. For some scholars, beliefs are
thought to be extremely difficult, if not impossible to
change. This apparent difficulty is often used as an
explanation of the sense that teachers are recalcitrant
and do not like to change. Another group of scholars
and educators, however, are optimistic that teachers
and teacher education students can change and, in
fact, often do change their beliefs and practices, and
that programs can help them do so in significant and
worthwhile directions. (p. 110)
Such a comment may be a bit shortsighted, if
not overgeneralized. Many of the studies cited
above neither integrate information from a vari-
ety of data sources nor give a complete picture of
the interaction among beliefs, knowledge, and
practice. Some relied on scales or interviews
alone, others completed only observations, while
still others tried surveys and observations but
omitted interviews. Most of the studies concern-
ing CLT mentioned the fact that multiple data
sources would eventually help address the limita-
tions of the work already completed. Moreover,
many of the L2 teacher studies concerning CLT
seemed to rely on the extent to which the prac-
tice of CLT notions adhered to CLT principles as
put forth in the professional literature. Richard-
son (1990) pointed out in more global terms the
difficulties educational change issues bring to
classrooms:
It is important, however, to note that change, research-
based or otherwise, is defined in this literature as
teachers doing something that others are suggesting
they do. Thus, the change is deemed as good or
appropriate, and resistance is viewed as bad or inap-
propriate. Even the recent work that is more sensitive
to teachers’ norms and beliefs fails to question the
reforms themselves (Donmoyer, 1987). Further, the
constant changes that teachers make when meeting
the changing needs of the students in the classroom
or trying out ideas that they hear from other teachers
is not recognized in these formulations. A critical
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
feature in this literature is that someone outside the
classroom decides what changes teachers will make.
(p. 11, italics original)
It is interesting to note that Nunan (1987) and
Kamaravadivelu (1992, 1993, 1994) offered evi-
dence (from “someone outside the classroom”)
that highlighted this specific issue within the L2
teaching profession. For instance, Nunan identi-
fied strategies, such as using referential questions
that could be used to increase the opportunities
for genuine communication, and Kumaravadi-
velu increased from 5 to 10 the number of
macrostrategies that might now come to influ-
ence the ideas of a principled communicative
approach (see Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, & Thur-
rell, 1997). However, neither of the authors ex-
plained how the teachers adapted the referential
questions or macrostrategies into situation-spe-
cific problems or how the teachers developed
their beliefs, knowledge, and practice with regard
to CLT. In other words, the authors seemed to
have ignored the teachers’ actual developmental
processes and stages, or else they neglected to
uncover and document how the teachers actually
dealt with an innovation such as CLT.
In short, these studies, reviews, and narratives
portray the complexity of the issues pertaining to
beliefs, knowledge, and practices and focus on the
interplay among them. Despite the theoretical de-
velopments and policy acceptance of CLT for nu-
merous L2 learning environments, many ques-
tions linger concerning how teachers think about
and use CLT in classrooms. It seems worthwhile to
investigate further the perspectives of L2 teach-
ers, that is, how they view, learn about, and imple-
ment CLT. In addition, within the Australian con-
text of teaching Japanese in high schools, there is
little known about inservice LOTE teachers’ per-
spectives about CLT. These teachers of Japanese
in Australia have identified such problems in their
teaching as articulation, low proficiency level, and
lack of quality inservices, good materials, and
school support (Kawagoe, 1989; Koide, 1976).
Nonetheless these inservice LOTE (Japanese)
teachers have not been studied in any great
depth, especially regarding their ideas about CLT
and practice. This omission triggers several
broader questions: How is teachers’ knowledge
about CLT developed or understood in light of
the fact that national and state directives urge the
acquisition of communicative LOTE abilities?
How are teachers implementing CLT ideas at the
classroom level? How do teachers actually teach in
language classrooms in a country and state that
promote communicative competence? These un-
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
answered questions guided this investigation and
promoted the analysis undertaken for this article.
Our overall goal was to uncover teachers’ beliefs
and knowledge about CLT in connection with
their practices in an Australian context—a goal
overlooked and understudied by both researchers
and policy-makers. The following questions pro-
vided focus:
1. What are Japanese LOTE teachers’ beliefs
and knowledge about (communicative) language
teaching?
2. How do they implement CLT in their class-
rooms?
3. How are their beliefs and knowledge about
(communicative) language teaching acquired
and developed?
OVERVIEW, PARTICIPANTS, DATA
COLLECTION, AND DATA ANALYSIS
In order to reveal teachers’ beliefs, knowledge,
and practices about CLT, we employed triangula-
tion that included qualitative and quantitative
data sources (or multiple data sources) of LOTE
teachers’ perspectives. Mathison (1988) argued
that “the use of any single method, just like the
view of any single individual, will necessarily be
subjective and therefore biased” (p. 14). There-
fore, she valued triangulation where one con-
structs meaningful explanations from multiple
data sources—sources that may appear inconsis-
tent or contradictory rather than cohering
around a single proposition. This use of multiple
sources is especially important in exploring be-
liefs, practices, and mandates. Pajares (1992)
reminded researchers of the dimensions in re-
searching beliefs:
It is also clear that, if reasonable inferences about
beliefs require assessments of what individuals say,
intend, and do, then teachers’ verbal expressions,
predispositions to action, and teaching behaviors
must all be included in assessments of beliefs. Not to
do so calls into question the validity of the findings
and the value of the study. Traditional belief invento-
ries provide limited information with which to make
inferences, and it is at this step in the measurement
process that understanding the context-specific na-
ture of beliefs becomes critical. (p. 327)
Participants
Ten state (public) school teachers of Japanese
(including 9 native Australian English speakers
and 1 native Japanese speaker) in 10 different
state high schools in a large Australian metropoli-
tan area participated in this study (9 female and
499
1 male). Three teachers had less than 3 years
experience teaching Japanese, 3 teachers had 3
to 6 years teaching experience, 2 teachers had 6
to 10 years teaching experience, and 2 teachers
had 10 to 13 years teaching experience.3 Their
professional preparation also varied. Four teach-
ers (including the native Japanese speaker) com-
pleted a Postgraduate Diploma in Education—a
1-year course—and 1 holds a Master of Arts in
Applied Linguistics. Three teachers holding the
Postgraduate Diploma in Education degree ma-
jored in Japanese for their undergraduate stud-
ies, while the native Japanese speaker majored in
French. The rest of the teachers started to teach
Japanese without any formal academic prepara-
tion in Japanese LOTE teaching. Their majors
variously represented the disciplines of biology,
commerce, economics, English, and music. Some
of the teachers finished short-term inservice pro-
grams on Japanese language and LOTE instruc-
tion after they had already begun teaching.
Among the 9 native Australian English speakers,
7 teachers experienced living in Japan for 1 to 2
years, 1 teacher stayed for 6 years, and 1 teacher
made four trips to Japan, lasting 2 to 3 weeks per
visit. In other words, most of the teachers who did
not receive formal academic preparation had ex-
periences overseas in the target language culture
before they began teaching Japanese. In addi-
tion, 8 of the 10 teachers also taught such other
subjects as English (3), mathematics (1), social
sciences (1), history and social education (1),
music (1), and sports (table tennis, 1). Pseudo-
nyms for the 10 teachers are used throughout the
data presentation (see Table 1).
Interview
As researchers, we developed an open-ended
interview protocol. After an initial pilot interview,
we made several modifications. For example,
background questions were separated from the
major interview questions so that the interview
could focus on specific questions (e.g., under-
standings of CLT, use of the textbook, the role of
grammar, communicative activities, and teacher
development). Ultimately, we developed and re-
fined 20 questions following Spradley’s (1979)
descriptive questions so that the respondent
would display “perspectives and moral forms”
(p. 107). A standardized protocol was established
to focus on certain issues following Spradley’s
recommendations. Twelve major questions were
then agreed upon, and two more pilot interviews
were conducted to test their efficiency. The final
interview protocol was completed, with minor
500 The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)

TABLE 1
Participants in the Study, Including Their Participation in the Three Data Collection Strategies

Name Years Degrees(s) Study Interview Survey Observation

Teaching Area(s)
Sean 1.5 BA, PGD Japanese and Asian Studies Yes Yes No
Margaret 5 BA Economics Yes Yes Yes
Tracey 5 BA, PGD Japanese and Linguistics Yes Yes No
Joan 6.5 BA History and English Yes Yes Yes
Alicia 13 Diploma of Commerce Yes Yes Yes
Education
Debra 13 BA, PGD Japanese and History Yes No Yes
Jane 4 BA, MA English and Applied Yes Yes Yes
Linguistics
Laura 8 BA Music Yes Yes Yes
Tamara 2.5 BS Biology Yes Yes Yes
Yumiko .75 BA, PGD French Literature and Yes Yes Yes
Japanese
Note. Pseudonyms are used throughout the article. PGD!Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Japanese), for
Yumiko a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (French).

modifications of wording. All 10 interviews were recorded as participant observations. In the

transcribed for descriptive data and analyzed.
Each interview (10 total) was conducted in En-
glish except for the interview with the native Japa-
nese speaking teacher, which was recorded and
transcribed in Japanese and subsequently trans-
lated into English by one of the researchers.
These transcribed interviews provided descrip-
tive data for analysis.
Observations
Classroom observations followed the inter-
views. The researcher was usually seated at the
back of the classroom and occasionally moved
around the class. Field notes taken on site docu-
mented the progression and procedures of each
lesson. Adhering to Silverman’s (1993) warning
to avoid early generalizations, we focused on what
was observable: setting, participants, events, acts,
and gestures (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). In addi-
tion, immediately following the observations, we
reviewed and expanded all notes to include fur-
ther information and detail (Glesne & Peshkin,
1992; Spradley, 1979). The observations of Japa-
nese class lessons were completed two to three
times in each of eight of the Japanese language
classrooms. Two teachers requested not to be ob-
served. Furthermore, 2 other teachers wanted to
use the native Japanese researcher as a native
informant, so in these classrooms it was not pos-
sible to observe a typical class session. However,
the interactions in these particular classes were
other classrooms our notes were made as ob-
server only. A total of 20 classroom observations
offered evidence about Japanese language in-
struction.
Survey
To add a dimension not tapped in the pre-
viously explained data sources, we adapted the
Foreign Language Attitude Survey for Teachers
(FLAST; for a full description see Savignon,
1983). Specifically, the responses to the survey
uncovered teachers’ individual differences and
overall general attitude. Nine of the 10 teachers
returned the questionnaires. Their Likert-scaled
responses were analyzed using descriptive statis-
tics and the computer program StatView (1993).
Although Savignon warned that FLAST was not
meant to be scored, she also proposed that
the answers teachers give will depend on their inter-
pretation of the questions as well as on their second
language learning and teaching experiences. A com-
parison of responses, however, will reveal the differ-
ences in attitude among teachers working together,
presumably toward similar goals. (p. 122)
It was precisely these differences of interpretation
among a group of professional language teachers
and the comparison of these differences with in-
terview and observation data that, we believed,
could further reveal and better delineate teach-
ers’ attitudes toward CLT. Responses were nu-
merically coded and those items receiving a mean
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
of 3.6 or higher were those with which teachers
agreed (the closer to 5, the more strongly teach-
ers agreed with it). Those items receiving a mean
of 2.4 or lower were those with which teachers
disagreed. Items falling between 2.4 and 3.6 were
those with which teachers neither agreed nor dis-
agreed, perhaps giving evidence of some uncer-
tainty among the participants as a group.
Analysis
In the main, qualitative inductive approaches
were used to analyze the data for this article (for
complete introductory discussion see Glesne &
Peshkin, 1992). In this instance, data were pe-
rused and trends, categories, and classifications
were developed using the constant comparative
method, suggested by Glaser and Strauss (1967),
and other similar procedure descriptions or
analysis suggestions from more recent publica-
tions (e.g., Foss & Kleinsasser, 1996; Kleinsasser,
1993). Themes that emerged from the various
data sources were identified, compared, and de-
veloped into the analysis presented below for the
L2 profession. In addition, the act of writing itself
was also part of the analysis. As Krathwohl (1993)
suggested,
Writing enforces a discipline that helps articulate
half-formed ideas. Something happens between the
formation of an idea and its appearance on paper, a
latency that somehow results in the clarification and
untangling of our thinking. Writing helps bring un-
conscious processing to light as articulated synthe-
sized statements. (p. 81)
Glesne and Peshkin (1992) reminded that: “The
act of writing also stimulates new thoughts, new
connections. Writing is rewarding in that it cre-
ates the product, the housing for the meaning
that you and others have made of your research
adventure. Writing is about constructing a text”
(p. 151). Moreover, the researchers sought to de-
velop this particular presentation so that readers
could enter into the events studied and vicari-
ously participate in creating text (Eisner, 1991).
Instead of talking about qualitative data, here it is
actually presented.4
CLT: PRACTICAL UNDERSTANDINGS
In this section, we bring together data from
interviews, surveys, and observations to describe
teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and prac-
tices—their understandings—of CLT. In the first
part, we outline the salient issues they conveyed
in the interviews and responded to on their sur-
501
veys, while also offering a glimpse of what actually
happened in Japanese language teachers’ class-
rooms. Their conceptions of CLT serve as a cata-
lyst to promote their understandings. We hope to
show that the challenges they face help clarify, in
part, why they understand CLT the way they do.
In the second part, we uncover where these teach-
ers think they learned about CLT. We acknowl-
edge how teachers situate their own under-
standings about CLT (and L2 teaching, in
general). The three data sources help articulate
how these LOTE teachers view (communicative)
language teaching as an evolving enterprise, a
phenomenon that continually challenges them in
their hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly L2 teach-
ing and learning experiences.
Toward a Definition of (Practical) CLT
The teachers gave few complete descriptions
about what CLT was and held varying, even frag-
mented, views. Yet, these fragmented views can be
explained by the challenges these teachers faced.
The 10 participants revealed their beliefs about
CLT in broad terms and many concurred that
CLT was neither fully articulated nor necessarily
an integral part of their instructional repertoires.
What Japanese Language Teachers Said, Responded,
and Did
One teacher eloquently overviewed the notion
that CLT was not yet established, giving valuable
insight into many of the teachers’ feelings. A sen-
timent that CLT was a “work in progress” fore-
shadowed evolving understandings of CLT by the
participants in this study. When asked, “How do
you define CLT?” she replied:
It’s a difficult question. Well, I suppose the definition
of [a] CLT method has not been established yet.
There are some varieties such as task-based . . . some
rigid scholars suggest not [even] using English in a
class. So, I am at a loss what CLT is. I think language
teaching should be related to students’ experiences
and interests which create natural situations for them
to speak. I suppose it is important, but I don’t know
whether it is communicative or not. (Yumiko)
Four main conceptions about CLT were dis-
cussed by the teachers: (a) CLT is learning to
communicate in the L2, (b) CLT uses mainly
speaking and listening, (c) CLT involves little
grammar instruction, (d) CLT uses (time-con-
suming) activities. How teachers talked about and
defined their notions of CLT were developed
through these four main conceptions that were
502
revealed through LOTE (Japanese) teachers’
voices, responses, and actions.
CLT Is Learning to Communicate in the L2. Almost
all teachers globally defined CLT as learning to
communicate with other people using the L2. A
few specifically added to that definition the idea
of using language for real purposes. Participants
relayed their sentiments as the following teachers
did.
I would hope that I would, ought to teach students
how to communicate both orally and in a written
form so that I would expect them to hold a conversa-
tion at the best of their ability. (Debra)
It’s teaching language that can be used by students in
real life, in real life-like situations. It’s used for real
purposes. There must be some need to communicate
in order to be able to challenge the students to use
language communicatively. (Joan)
Learning to communicate was an important
attribute of CLT, and, through the survey, these
teachers agreed that the students’ motivation to
continue language study was directly related to
their success in actually learning to speak the
language. They also suggested that students did
not have to answer a question posed in Japanese
with a complete sentence and strongly agreed
that one could not teach language without cul-
ture, while concurring that cultural information
should be given in the L2 as much as possible.
These teachers were clearly aware that simulated
real-life situations should be used to teach conver-
sational skills, yet were ultimately realistic in
agreeing that most language classes did not pro-
vide enough opportunity for the development of
such conversational skills. It is clear that teachers
saw the value in what CLT offered; nonetheless,
their scepticism about attaining communicative
skills surfaced. The participants neither agreed
nor disagreed that the ability to speak a language
was innate; therefore, they believed that everyone
capable of speaking a first language should be
capable of learning to speak a L2. Although there
was the potential for communication in their
classrooms, the teachers were unsure about the
extent to which they had the time to promote it
and whether or not all students were capable of
learning it.
Three challenges created further tensions for
teachers in promoting communication in the L2.
These included subject matter articulation, lack
of institutional support, and their own lack of
proficiency in the L2. (These three issues have
plagued the language professions in both Austra-
lia and the U.S. [e.g., Ariew, 1982; Australian Lan-
guage and Literacy Council, 1996; Kawagoe,
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
1989; Koide, 1976; Lange, 1982] and became par-
ticularly highlighted when foreign language or
LOTE instruction spread to primary schools
[Clyne, 1977; Heining-Boynton, 1990]). The
teachers relayed their frustrations when discuss-
ing these problems with (communicative) lan-
guage teaching.
As Japanese language teaching and learning
became popular (and required) in primary
schools, these high school teachers faced articu-
lation problems. Alicia described how the teach-
ers did not necessarily welcome previous lan-
guage learning experiences by their students in
primary schools. Tracey maintained that LOTE
teaching needed to be accepted and supported
within the school and wider community, and Yu-
miko yearned for collegiality.
I think the most difficult thing is [the] students com-
ing from [the] primary school. Some of them maybe
have 3 years, and some of them maybe have 1 year in
primary school, some of them have nothing. Then,
they’re coming to Year 8. And it’s very difficult to
have the mixed classes. Then, when you’re getting to
Year 9, you have students who are coming to do Japa-
nese in Year 9, who have no Japanese, who have
various experiences [and you start] all over again.
(Alicia)
Another issue is at the moment, we’re in [a] real
transition period in the community with acceptance
and nonacceptance of LOTE teaching as valuable.
Some people value it, some people don’t value it at
all. And some of the people in the community don’t
value it, or colleagues [within the school don’t value
it either]. So that’s very difficult until we have a cul-
ture of, no, not a culture of, uh, a mindset, where
having a second language is valuable. That’s the be-
ginning and the end. Learning all languages is valu-
able. That’s it. So you learn it all through primary
[school], secondary [school]. It’s exactly the same,
science, English, math you do it. It’s just part of what
you do. But we are not there yet. So until we get to
that point, this transition is very difficult. We have an
opposition from others. (Tracey)
I also feel it’s difficult to receive support from the
school just because I’m not Australian. I think it’s
true. We don’t usually communicate with other col-
leagues. We talk to each other only within close
friends. Though it’s not related to language teaching
directly, I think it is a problem. (Yumiko)
On the survey the LOTE teachers as a group
neither agreed nor disagreed that they needed to
be fluent themselves to begin to teach communi-
catively. Nonetheless, during the interviews, the
teachers commented on their own (inadequate)
language proficiency; however, many reported
that they tried to use the L2 as much as possible.
Tamara felt insecure about her language profi-
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
ciency. Joan responded that, as she became more
confident with her L2 proficiency and ability to
meet students’ needs, she moved further away
from the textbook. Tamara was not afraid to be
honest. Joan decided to go back to university to
finish her 3rd year of Japanese study.
Also, my ability to speak Japanese. Sometimes I feel
like my language is not sufficient to challenge the
students, to push them. I don’t think I give them
enough listening experience, because I am insecure
of my own Japanese. (Tamara)
In terms of the daily use of textbook, I am surprised
to find that I am moving further and further away
from [the] use of the regular textbook. Every year
level has one, but I find as I become more confident
with my language, and as I become more confident to
meet the needs or interest of the students and differ-
ent topics, I want real Japanese language, not the
textbook. (Joan)
The teachers reported that CLT meant learn-
ing to communicate in the L2. The interview and
survey data showed how they coped with what this
meant to them. The challenges, however, seemed
sometimes to outweigh the benefits of making
communication in the L2 a reality. Nonetheless,
the first conception served as a general reminder
about the global purpose of CLT. This focus on
communication led to the second conception
that these teachers think writing and reading are
not as prevalent (important) as listening and
speaking.
CLT Uses Mainly Speaking and Listening. A sec-
ond trend from the data revealed that several
teachers viewed CLT as focusing extensively on
speaking and listening skills. The following
quotes represented this general view.
The goal of the teaching is that at the end of learning
the language, people can actually talk in the language
with the native speakers understand[ing] what
they’re saying and be[ing] able to communicate their
ideas rather than just being able to read and write.
(Margaret)
My understanding of CLT is that you teach so that
[the] students hear it and so that they speak it. I
would try where it’s possible to teach something new
by actually speaking. [. . .] I think writing needs a little
explanation to teach the pattern and get them to
write the pattern. [. . .] And perhaps because I
learned Japanese as an adult and learned it commu-
nicatively, I didn’t learn a lot of writing at the time.
Writing was the neglected skill. So I suppose I’ve been
very aware of CLT. (Alicia)
At the completion of her interview, Alicia re-
vealed again that she learned Japanese communi-
catively in speaking and listening, but not in writ-
503
ing. In short, her L2 learning experiences
seemed to have formed a belief that CLT used
only speaking and listening.
The survey results reinforced the significance
of speaking and listening skills, or at least sug-
gested that there might be an order to how skills
were learned. The teachers agreed that the in-
struction of such skills preceded the teaching of
reading and writing, that L2 acquisition was most
successful when based on an oral approach, and
that students could still be successful in learning
to communicate in a L2 even if they did not read
well. The teachers did not attribute weak oral
competence to a lack of objective means in teach-
ing it. Nonetheless, assessment of students’ lan-
guage abilities caused some concern.
The LOTE teachers found that assessment
tasks that were focused on the four skills offered
another slight obstacle. It is interesting to note
that the LOTE teachers emphasized that CLT
meant speaking and listening; however, the gov-
ernment guidelines for communicative assess-
ment included all four skills, each seemingly
given equal weighting. The teachers’ concerns
dealt with the number of tests and the lack of
cohesion among the skill examinations.
And we have four tests at the end of each semester,
reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And the
middle of each semester, we have two tests. In the
middle of [the] first semester, if we test reading and
writing, then, in the middle of [the] second semester,
we test speaking and listening. So by the end of the
year we’ve tested four skills, three times. (Margaret)
Well, according to the senior curriculum, I am re-
quired to give them a certain number of tests in what
they call the four macro skills—reading, writing,
speaking, and listening. They all have to be separate
tests. So I have to give them one of each kind of tests
each term. I basically just give them tests, you know. I
will have a passage written in Japanese on a topic that
we’ve studied. And they have to read it and they have
questions in English and they have to answer in En-
glish. So it’s just as a comprehensive test. Listening,
well, I’ll have [a] passage in Japanese. I’ll read it and
then they’ll have questions in English. So they don’t
see it. They just think they read it. Then, they have to
answer in English. And speaking, I just give them
some topics to talk about and they have to talk. (Role
play or interview?) Oh, both. So, that’s how I evalu-
ate, just standard, four micro skills tests. I’m not par-
ticularly looking for communicative skills as such, but
just as four micro skills, which is the prescribed way
of testing. (Sean)
The tension between CLT and skills became
apparent. The teachers saw two completely differ-
ent issues and proceeded with what they per-
ceived they had to do in their classrooms for their
504
students. It is interesting to note that many of
them did not see, or present, how the competing
conceptions could be reconciled. They allowed
their understanding of skills (through policy) to
outweigh their promotion of CLT (especially in
using speaking and listening). Items from the
survey further revealed that the group thought
that dialogue memorization was an effective tech-
nique in the process of learning a L2 but dis-
agreed over the belief that mastering L2 gram-
mar was a prerequisite to developing oral
communication skills. This disagreement could
be why some teachers saw these other skills (read-
ing and writing) as a means to focus on grammar.
These issues and challenges only seemed to rein-
force the third conception about the role of
grammar in CLT.
CLT Involves Little Grammar Instruction. Quite a
few teachers understood CLT as not involving
grammar, or any type of language structure. Al-
though some teachers did not directly mention
grammar usage, many alluded to the problem of
how, if at all, to include it.
Another issue in LOTE learning and teaching is that
“Is communicative teaching good?” Because people
have taken it so far to the point of the banning of
grammar teaching or of the banning of drilling, of
the banning of all little parts. You have to do at some
points, to learn Hiragana [Japanese syllabary], you
have to write out over and over after practice. But in
communicative language, you think, “I can’t do it. It’s
not communicative.” So that’s the burden. . . . So
when I [was] first teaching grammar, it had very little,
very little place. We did lots of talking, lots of reading
and writing and listening, but not so much grammar.
Which is the mistake of, I think, part of the flow in
communicative teaching. I almost expected that stu-
dents would pick it up. They would somehow work it
out without me saying “‘wo’ is the object. . . .” It
would work if you guess. Sometimes I still do that.
(Tracey)
It’s using Japanese whenever possible in the class-
room. But I’m not particularly a communicative lan-
guage teacher, because I love teaching grammar. . . .
While I like some aspects of it, I very much dislike
some . . . aspects of it . . . while I was studying in Japan,
I had a teacher who was studying [the] communica-
tive method. And she believed that she did not ex-
plain grammatical points in the text. She believed you
should get to understand them from the atmosphere.
And that was very frustrating as a student. So that’s
why I don’t like it so much, because I love to under-
stand the grammar. And I think many of the best
students do. And students we have doing Japanese
are often very analytical thinkers. And Japanese to me
is a little bit like math. And students thought of it like
math. So sometimes it’s possible to have a little expla-
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
nation. So that’s why I like [a] combination of both
systems. (Jane)
Debra was in a dilemma, because she was not
allowed to offer a grammar test according to the
government’s guidelines of communicative as-
sessment.
I think that [the] writing test is the main worry. It is
the big worry, because it takes us a lot of time. Actu-
ally this is the big problem with CLT, because our tests
have to be communicative, too. So we can’t have a
grammar test. We can’t have a test where you have to
do multiple choice. No, we can’t. We can’t do it at all.
So what we have to do is trying authentic material for
students to read. (Debra)
The participants were challenged over what to
do with grammar in their learning environments.
Most teachers did not discuss the role of gram-
mar in CLT because they thought grammar was
not part of CLT. Neither did they understand
completely the guidelines for not allowing gram-
mar to be included in their testing. Yet they re-
layed difficulties in teaching it when it came to
discussing what went on with language teaching
in their classrooms. Although some did not know
the role of grammar in CLT as revealed in the
definitions above, others blamed English teach-
ers for not teaching grammar or felt it difficult to
present grammar in an interesting way, or both.
Uh, these are difficult questions. What’s the role of
grammar? Uh, I think grammar is important so that
meaning is not lost, but I try not to correct the stu-
dents’ grammar too much, when they speak, because
I don’t want to inhibit them. I don’t think it is [a] very
important thing. I treat it as a building block, and
then, hopefully that will make students practice what-
ever language they’ve learned before. And if there
are many minor mistakes on grammar, I don’t fix
them up on it. Yeah, I can’t answer that question very
well. (Tamara)
For a number of years now, they haven’t really been
teaching even in English very much. I found a lot of
my students at high school don’t really know much
about the technical aspects of English language. So it
was discouraged for some years. The teaching of En-
glish grammar was discouraged. So a lot of the stu-
dents have gone through the high school system not
really learning English grammar. So then, you know,
I think it’s unfortunate. So it’s hard to teach them
Japanese grammar if they don’t understand English
grammar. (Sean)
The conundrum of grammar’s place within
CLT (or language teaching in general, for that
matter) was further highlighted in the survey re-
sults. As a group, these teachers were uncertain
about the importance of having students learn
rules of grammar (they neither agreed nor dis-
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
agreed) but were adamant that the grammar-
translation approach to L2 learning was not effec-
tive in developing oral communication skills. On
the one hand, these LOTE teachers accepted that
student responses in the L2 did not have to be
linguistically accurate. They further agreed that
when a student made syntactical errors, the er-
rors should be accepted as a natural and inevita-
ble part of language acquisition and that ideas
can be exchanged spontaneously in a foreign lan-
guage without having linguistic accuracy. On the
other hand, the LOTE teachers agreed that if first
language (L1) teachers taught grammar the way
they should, it would be easier for them to teach
a L2. The participants further agreed that when
the foreign language structure differed from that
of the L1, sometimes extensive repetitions, sim-
ple and varied, were needed to form the new
habit. They agreed that pattern practice was an
effective learning technique and that the estab-
lishment of new language habits required exten-
sive, well-planned practice on a limited body of
vocabulary and sentence patterns.
It is interesting to note that puzzlement over
issues surrounding grammar also manifested it-
self within another challenge teachers had with
learning styles. Most teachers acknowledged that
they had to be aware of students’ learning styles,
especially different styles between year levels.
They tended to agree with the survey item that all
students, regardless of previous academic success
and preparation, should be encouraged and
given the opportunity to study a foreign lan-
guage. Nonetheless, learning styles offered an ad-
ditional focus that some felt was not at all part of
CLT. Moreover, here teachers related that some
students wanted a grammar focus.
All Grade 11 and 12 want to study in a formal way. So
even though I introduce a communicative activity,
they don’t want to get involved in it. They are more
interested in grammatical explanations. But, for ex-
ample, Grade 10 get along well with me. They really
like interesting topics and start to speak. So I feel
more comfortable with juniors. Seniors seem to have
acquired a formal way of studying like Japanese stu-
dents. . . .This is where the difficulty lies, I feel. (Yu-
miko)
Uh, Year 8, they learn patterns. We teach them, you
know, “This is the pattern.” If you want to say, I like
French and I like math, and I hate science. Then, we
teach them to say, “. . . ga suki,” “. . . ga kirai desu.”
Then, we give them a list of subjects. And we get them
to talk. So they can express their own feeling in Japa-
nese. We did the same things with sports and hobbies
and families. . . . And then, if we are doing something
like [the topic of] restaurant, then, we give them a
dialogue. We get them to learn the basic dialogue.
505
Then, we give them . . . extra things they can add to
it. Then, they must learn and present it in a class. Do
role-play or so. And in Year 9 [it is] similar, but there’s
more freedom. By the time you get to Year 12, just
talk. (Laura)
What Japanese Language Teachers Did: Traditional
Practices. Regardless of the role grammar had ac-
cording to the individual teachers or what teach-
ers said about accommodating learning styles,
many findings from classroom observations con-
founded the information given by the teachers in
their interviews and on their surveys. Grammar
was more central in their language teaching than
these LOTE teachers admitted. The teachers
were more didactic in their instruction than they
related and less concerned with individuals than
with the class as a group entity. Whether or not
they were teaching communicatively, grammar
was a central focus in the observed classrooms.
For example, although most teachers said that
they used role-play, games, simulations, and so
on, classes observed for this study were heavily
teacher-fronted, grammar was presented without
any context clues, and there were few interactions
seen among students in the classrooms (this de-
scribes what we mean by “traditional practices”).
Most Japanese teachers used English extensively
to explain grammatical points and give instruc-
tions; L2 communicative use and speaking in the
L2 by students, in particular, were not as preva-
lent as one might assume from listening to the
interviews or reading the survey results. The Japa-
nese teachers readily allowed students to answer
in English. A few teachers tried to integrate cul-
ture into their lessons. In short, most teachers
displayed traditional practice tendencies. The fol-
lowing selected examples typically portrayed what
was seen in the Japanese language classrooms.
For instance, Tamara started her lesson for
Year 12 with a Kanji (Chinese characters) quiz.
At the beginning, she handed out quiz sheets to eve-
ryone. She gave students 10 minutes to complete the
quiz. While students were working on the quiz, she
wrote grammatical points on the board. After the
quiz, she started to explain the grammar (passive
form) by using English sentences as examples. Then,
she explained it with Japanese sentences. While she
explained verb conjugations, students wrote them
down in their notebooks. After that, she showed verb
cards and made students say passive forms. It was like
drills. Then, she asked students to open the text-
books, and they did exercises that transformed active
sentences into passive ones. She called on each stu-
dent individually and let him or her answer. Finally,
she asked students to create their own sentences by
506
using passive forms. After a few minutes, the bell
rang. (Observation of Tamara)
This was her lesson. There was little interaction
between the teacher and the students, and little
among the students. Moreover, this lesson pro-
vided little evidence of attention to varying learn-
ing styles. Grammar points were explained de-
ductively without any context clues and were
followed by mechanical exercises in textbooks.
Yumiko is a native Japanese teacher. She just
started teaching in the academic year after she
finished her Postgraduate Diploma of Education.
The following is her Year 12 lesson. She said in
her interview that communicative activities did
not work for Years 11 and 12, because these stu-
dents liked a more formal way of study, especially
grammatical explanations.
She spent most of her lesson speaking Japanese.
First, she gave an example to introduce a new sen-
tence pattern in context. She kept on giving other
examples in Japanese. Each student was checking
the new function with the handout the teacher had
given them previously. Then, after several examples,
she asked yes-no questions to students. But students
answered in English. Sometimes students asked
questions in English about the content of the topic
or examples. There were no interactions among stu-
dents. Then, she started to give another example to
introduce another grammatical point. They re-
peated the same process. Finally, she introduced
three new Kanji words. She wrote them on the black-
board and she made sure of the meaning of each
word by asking individual students. Students an-
swered in English. There were no exercises with
Kanji in sentences. The lesson stopped here. (Ob-
servation of Yumiko)
This native-speaking Japanese teacher took
pride in her approach to introducing grammar in
contexts. In her interview, she stated, “I often use
many examples in Japanese to explain a new
word. I keep on saying it until students can guess
what it is. I like it that way.” Nevertheless, students
answered in English during this lesson. No inter-
action among students could be seen, and it
needs to be remembered that this teacher men-
tioned that she relied little on communicative
activities because “they don’t want to get involved
in it.” At this stage, she seemed to give up even
trying to get them involved. She believed that
certain students’ learning styles outweighed us-
ing communicative activities.
Margaret did a lesson for Year 10. Although she
attempted to use role-play, it was in reality a dia-
logue memorization. Overall, she relied heavily
on traditional practices.
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
Students came in the classroom in a line. First, she
reviewed the grammar structure (potential form) on
the blackboard. She asked a yes-no question to indi-
vidual students. Then, she reviewed Kanji using
cards. Students read several cards, each time the
teacher showed the card to them several times. After
that, she told the students to open the textbook. They
did translation exercises. She asked individual stu-
dents to answer them. Then, she asked two students
to read the short model conversation. She asked an-
other pair to read it. She gave the students five min-
utes to practice the skit in pairs. After that, she asked
for volunteers. Students were shy. So she asked two
pairs to perform the skit without looking at the text-
book. The rest of the class helped the performers
when they got stuck. The bell rang, and she told the
students that they would practice the skit more next
time. (Observation of Margaret)
Margaret related in her interview that she had
difficulty motivating Year 8 and 9 students and
managing their discipline. Although she stated
that “in Year 10 and 11 and 12 by the students
who have chosen to do the subject, my teaching
method is totally different. I do lots of question-
naires, lots of games, and lot of more discussion,
role-play . . . ,” she actually relied here on tradi-
tional practices. As our interview, survey, and ob-
servation data coalesced, it became clear that ten-
sions abounded over grammar instruction,
learning styles, and CLT. The challenges of meet-
ing students’ needs continued to give focus to the
teachers’ daily instruction, while their idea of
CLT as minimal grammar instruction was mud-
dled in the quagmire of what they did or thought
they had to do.
CLT Uses (Time-Consuming) Activities. The final
conception evidenced in the interview data was
that CLT used activities that must be fun, and
almost all teachers admitted that preparing such
jovial activities was time intensive. Although the
survey showed that teachers disagreed with the
statement that a good foreign language teacher
did not need audiovisuals to build an effective
program, they agreed that if language teachers
used all the audiovisual equipment, materials,
and techniques the experts say they should, there
would be no time for eating and sleeping, much
less teaching. These Japanese teachers also nearly
agreed (mean 3.4) that individualizing instruc-
tion was really not feasible in L2 classes (which,
in a surprising way, ties in with their issues regard-
ing their reports of learning styles). Tracey com-
mented that teachers felt they were failing if the
class did not include fun elements, and Sean dis-
cussed how he coped with the issue.
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
It’s from CLT or I’m not sure where it comes from.
But there is an understanding that as LOTE teachers
we must have our classes, [they] must be fun, they
must be entertaining, and so [we] play lots of games
and kill ourselves trying to entertain our students. If
they are not, if it is not entertaining, we feel like we’re
failing. And students also [say], “That’s boring, Miss.”
And you think, of course, everything has some bor-
ing, bad, some not interesting parts, right? So that’s
another part. (Tracey)
My understanding of communicative teaching is, I
suppose, teaching in a way rather than just learn[ing]
grammar or translat[ing] from one language to an-
other. It involves using learning activities where the
students are actually engaged in communicating with
other people, of course, usually within [a] class
group. . . . In that way, I suppose, they are supposed
to learn how to use the language more easily than just
to try [the] grammatical translation [way] to learn-
ing. . . . But I have not really used them very much.
Well, it’s time-consuming. Of course, it’s so much
easier to use [a] textbook. I mean it would be nicer if
it was a textbook with a lot of communicative learning
activities in it. To be always making every week, for
every lesson, to make activities in it, it’s very time-con-
suming and [I] just wonder, I don’t have that much
time to spend on it. Because I have other subjects and
another class to teach, too. (Sean)
Quite a few participants said they occasionally
used CLT activities in classrooms. Alicia described
her use of a fun activity.
So you can use group activities or pair activities, inter-
views, they can be interviewing. For instance, another
thing the Year 10 just learned is to say when is your
birthday. So they have to go around and ask 10 peo-
ple that question. . . . So that’s communication. They
can go around and ask. This school is very interest-
ing. Hardly anybody was born in [suburb]. So I use
activities like that as often as I can. And then also for
listening, for instance, today, with one of my Year 10
classes, I was pretending to be their phone answering
machine. I’m the answering machine. So they had to
take notes. So I pretended to be the person. So I
made suggestions. (Alicia)
Almost all teachers reported they needed more
time to prepare materials for CLT activities,
which related directly to the fact that these teach-
ers perceived there existed a lack of good materi-
als including textbooks for communicative lan-
guage instruction.
We don’t use the textbook everyday. My Grade 8, they
have no textbook. Next year we’ll have one, but this
year we don’t, because the textbook was not commu-
nicative. It was too boring. For Grade 9 we have Is-
shoni just for the first time this year. So I use this
perhaps half of the time. So after four lessons maybe
I’ll use it for part of the lessons. And then, we’ll use
this to practice. And they can use this for a homework
507
exercise. But I don’t teach from the textbook, usually
I teach something new, before they look at the text-
book. So we need more time to prepare our own
materials. It’s quite hard. It’s not like Japan where
they use, everybody uses the same, and same day,
same page. . . . I think I need time to prepare the
resources for the students. I think that’s really impor-
tant. To make flash cards, to make the lesson interest-
ing, we need to have really more time. (Debra)
The time to reflect as a teacher. [. . . ] And I teach 27
out of 35 lessons a week. [. . . ] I might have three or
four lessons a week at most of my own preparation
and correction time. What I would really love is the
luxury of something like a position, a head of Depart-
ment, where you have [a] half time table, half teach-
ing, half managing, where you would have time to
look at resource materials available and slowly and
carefully put together a course. (Joan)
Another major challenge to CLT and its activi-
ties was discipline. Margaret revealed in her inter-
view that discipline was the priority and that there
was little room for her to use communicative ac-
tivities in Grade 8 classes. Jane also used a similar
technique to “settle students down.”
But unfortunately a lot of our students, lots of stu-
dents I am teaching at high school at Year 8, they are
forced to study Japanese. So they have very negative
attitudes. So if I speak to them in Japanese in the
classroom, they switch off from what they want to
know. So all of the time I have to speak in English
anyway. And they are quite badly behaved students
anyway. So the way that I teach Japanese is not really
communicative. It’s more like I’ve got to keep these
kids quiet, more behaved for 35 minutes. And the
main idea is not that I’m teaching at all. The main
idea is discipline. (Margaret)
Nearly everyday I give them a little quiz to start with
the lesson, quite often. And it might be grammar or
vocabulary or Kanji or something. Almost everyday,
particularly with Grade 8, it settles them down. If they
write something, they can concentrate on it. (Jane)
Although LOTE teachers agreed that language
learning should be fun, they disagreed that L2
acquisition was not and probably never would be
relevant to the average Australian student. But
they neither agreed nor disagreed as a group that
one of their problems in teaching a L2 was that
they tried to make learning fun and games. Some
teachers agreed, others disagreed, and there was
no consensus.
Yet, student motivation and LOTE teachers’
concerns about it appeared throughout the inter-
views. As seen in previous quotations and discus-
sions, these teachers struggled to motivate their
students. This particular issue gained momentum
when the teachers admitted to their difficulties
with subject matter articulation, grammar in-
508
struction, acknowledgment of individual learn-
ing styles, and questionable assessment items. Stu-
dent motivation also affected the decision on
whether or not to try out CLT. Jane expressed her
difficulty in motivating students who, especially in
Grade 8, had to take the subject. Note further
that she again highlighted and integrally related
the issue of learning styles.
The most critical issue at the junior level is that be-
cause they are not streamed academically, we have [a]
very wide range of ability from very good to very poor
[students in the] language class we have today. And
so we must teach “Hiragana.” But some students can’t
master that. So they are already dropping behind. So
by the end of the year, there’s a very wide gap. And
those students who are very poor become very resent-
ful. And it’s very hard to maintain the interest level of
everyone, when there’s such a wide gap. So that’s one
of the most critical issues. And I don’t know what the
answer is, we should stream or what we should do. But
that also subtracts from CLT, because, of course, they
can’t understand. They’re slower learners. So they
can’t write, they can’t stand what is happening as well
as the better students. So that’s one of the most criti-
cal issues. (Jane)
Tamara revisited the value of learning another
language:
And also I think it important that students see a value
in learning another language, because if they don’t
see it as just another subject that they have to do, I
don’t think we’re going to have a right attitude to
learning about cultures. And if they are not inter-
ested in culture, then, it’s also going to make it diffi-
cult for them to pick up the language. (Tamara)
Debra lamented the fact that students lacked
motivation because they did not particularly care
for discrete-point learning:
I think sometimes, [students] lack the motivation to
really study a language, the skills of the language. For
example, I can teach them some new words or new
Kanji, but students find it very hard to learn. The
students must realize that they need to study. And, of
course, if they had a trip to Japan, that would be good
motivation for them. (Debra)
Debra did encourage students in Years 11 and
12 to involve themselves in the Japanese language
by watching TV programs and reading. These
activities would, she felt, encourage the students
to be motivated to learn in her advanced classes.
And I’m trying to build up the materials that we have
at school so that students can be interested in the
subject. So, for example, if we have students in class,
who are interested in sports, they can read some
sporting magazine, so [we] watch the baseball or
Sumo on TV. Or if the students are interested in
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
music, then, they can read a music magazine or watch
the video clip, or [sing] some Japanese songs or
something like that. And that makes them more in-
terested. (Debra)
CLT activities appeared, at first glance, to influ-
ence student motivation, but this was not neces-
sarily the case. Instead, their focus on form and
student discipline made these teachers shy away
from CLT activities, or relegate them to the more
advanced language learners. Moreover, it ap-
peared that the lack of availability of CLT activi-
ties (or time to create them) caused these teach-
ers practically to ignore them. Time was not what
these teachers had, so CLT activities were not a
priority. This low priority was apparent in the
scarcity of CLT activities (of any kind) seen dur-
ing observations.
What Japanese Language Teachers Did: Innovative
Practices. It was obvious that the teachers believed
that CLT activities created too much work for
them, because few participants were observed to
use such activities in the classroom. In contrast to
their use of the traditional practices mentioned
previously, only a few teachers used student-stu-
dent interactions or made students use the lan-
guage for real purposes. Of these, two teachers
also attempted to use Japanese to a greater extent
than the other teachers did. As mentioned above,
Alicia reported using some innovative ideas. Her
lesson for Year 9 gave further insight into her
practices.
First, she reviewed some Kanji numbers. She held
cards and asked each student to read one. The stu-
dent picked up the card. She told the student in Japa-
nese to show the card to everyone. Others repeated
the number. She tried several cards. All these words
were related to the topic “restaurant.” Then, she
showed a Japanese tea cup, a sake cup, and other
things asking questions in Japanese. Students an-
swered in Japanese. She checked homework. Those
who did not do the homework stood up, and they
were told to come back to the classroom during
lunchtime to show the homework. Then, they did
translation exercises from the textbook. After giving
instruction for the next homework assignment, she
gave students 10 minutes to prepare for a role-play (at
the Japanese restaurant) in groups of 3 to 4. One stu-
dent was a waiter/waitress, and the others were cus-
tomers. She walked around the class and sometimes
answered students’ questions. Then, four groups per-
formed in front of the class. Three groups mainly fol-
lowed the model dialogue, but the last group was in-
teresting because the students did not follow the
model dialogue. They made the class laugh. She made
some comments on their performance—“Well done”
and a little tip about how to order at a Japanese restau-
rant. (Observation of Alicia)
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
Although she used role-play, she used it to prac-
tice grammatical patterns, and there were few
opportunities for genuine communication
among the students except in the last group’s
unexpected role-play. The overall focus for the
class was to complete tasks from the book, not to
negotiate meaning within the tasks.
Laura attempted to involve her students in free
conversation during a Year 11 lesson.
First, she checked the homework and reviewed the
key expressions which were related to the topic “ill-
ness.” One key expression was reviewed briefly on the
blackboard. Then, she introduced Kanji for some key
words such as medicine, hospital, and illness by using
mnemonics. Next, using handouts and pictures, she
added some other expressions patients would often
use. She asked students, “How would you say, when
. . . ?” Students answered in Japanese, picking up ap-
propriate new expressions. After that, she gave the
students 10 minutes to prepare for a role-play be-
tween a doctor and a patient. There were no model
skits. She went around the class to help some stu-
dents. But most students seemed comfortable and
worked on their original skits. Then it was time to
perform. They did not hesitate at all. They all seemed
to be used to role-play. Each of the five pairs per-
formed in front of the class. (They really seemed to
enjoy it.) Finally, she gave some feedback about use-
ful words and expressions to supplement the lesson.
(Observation of Laura)
This observation data provided evidence that
Year 11 students did get involved in a form of
communicative activity. In fact, they enjoyed it. It
is interesting to note that this teacher used a
different practice for Year 8. In this instance she
paid more attention to discipline.
All the students were outside the classroom. They
entered in a line, one by one. Some said hello in
Japanese to me. Everyone was seated, but the class
was still noisy. She said in a loud voice, “Those who
don’t behave yourselves have no lunch time. It’s your
choice. So think about it.” Then, she called the roll in
Japanese. Students had to say “Yes” in Japanese. She
would not accept English, so some students had to
repeat in Japanese. Then, she said, “If you behave
yourself, I will take you to the basketball court and
we’ll have a game. Today’s topic is ‘asking direc-
tions.’” First, she reviewed some key words. She used
a quiz like “Bingo.” Instead of saying “Bingo,” the
students said “Yatta” (I made it!). The students were
familiar with the procedure and concentrated on it.
All the words were related to the topic. They repeated
this game three times. By that time they seemed to be
comfortable with these words. Then, she gave the
students a handout. It was a map with a school, bank,
McDonald’s, and so on. She started to use a new
expression using the map. She gave a couple of exam-
ples. Some students asked, “Miss, what is it?” She said,
509
“Think, think about it.” She encouraged students to
guess the meaning. After that, they practiced asking
directions in pairs. They went outside to the basket-
ball court to play games in pairs in Japanese. One of
each pair was blindfolded and the other partner gave
directions to the goal in Japanese. This game was a
competition. The students were enthusiastic about it.
(Observation of Laura)
This teacher used a range of activities accord-
ing to grade levels. For Year 8, she used more
physically related games such as the total physical
response (TPR) through which students inter-
preted Japanese. For Year 11, she allowed more
free conversation. She also used Japanese for
most of the lessons. Laura was originally a music
teacher. This teacher’s experiences in Ja-
pan—learning history in Japan and teaching
English—influenced her teaching. Her interview
data also documented that she used different ap-
proaches with different grades. As she readily ac-
knowledged, she had difficulties implementing
communicative activities, especially when trying
to incorporate grammar into her lesson. None-
theless, her classroom teaching demonstrated
that, as she related in her interview, it was her
personal L2 learning and teaching experiences
that tended to form her conceptions of (commu-
nicative) language teaching. (Such a perspective
will be discussed more thoroughly in the section
below on how teachers learned about CLT.)
Through interviews, observations, and surveys,
the participants in this study revealed that they
found CLT activities too time-consuming, and
they reported numerous challenges to their
teaching that, in essence, allowed them to avoid
developing CLT techniques while also avoiding
the consequences of their challenges and what
this meant for their instruction.
Summary. The three data sources revealed four
conceptions of these LOTE teachers’ ideas about
CLT as well as challenges that provided tensions
that affected those conceptions. The observation
data showed reluctance on the part of teachers to
promote CLT and indicated that many teachers
avoided (or at least challenged or mutated) the
few conceptions of CLT that they held. The inter-
view and survey data explained perhaps why
teachers did and thought what they did. Al-
though most teachers reported using communi-
cative activities such as role-play, games, survey,
group work, and simulations, unfortunately,
these things were rarely observed. There were few
observed student-student interactions in most of
the classrooms. Only two teachers actually used
role-play of any type, while most relied on tradi-
510
tional practices: teacher-fronted, repetition,
translation, explicit grammar presentation, prac-
tice from the textbook, and little or no L2 use or
culture integration. Their conceptions of CLT
appeared to have little chance for extensive devel-
opment. Furthermore, their L2 instructional be-
liefs, knowledge, and practices were rarely guided
by their conceptions of CLT.
We examine next how these LOTE teachers
thought they learned about CLT and reveal how
they personally made sense of Japanese teaching
and learning. The following section unravels just
how teachers thought they developed their ideas
about CLT.
HOW JAPANESE LANGUAGE TEACHERS
LEARNED ABOUT CLT
As the teachers discussed their various ideas
about CLT, they were also asked how they learned
about CLT, how they came to hold these concep-
tions of CLT, and what their sources of learning
were. Responses from the interviews showed that
the teachers learned about CLT from a variety of
things that included personal L2 learning, per-
sonal L2 teaching (trial and error), teacher devel-
opment programs, inservices, and other teachers.
Although the teachers learned about CLT
through multiple avenues, personal L2 learning
and teaching experiences seemed to have had the
greatest influence.
Personal L2 Learning
How teachers learned L2s as students seemed
to influence heavily their beliefs about language
teaching and, hence, their personal views about
CLT. In particular, those who learned L2 in real
situations had strong beliefs about how students
learn a L2.
In high school I learned French and I learned French
not in a communicative way at all. I learned French
rather like Japanese students in Japan learning En-
glish. So that was not very much help. When I learned
Japanese in university, I did so much, so much trans-
lation and that was not really communicative. I think,
when I went out becoming a student teacher and I
watched other teachers teach Japanese, and then,
after that it’s just talking to other teachers and just
learning, keep learning. How I teach is very personal
and I teach every class in a different way. (Debra)
My own LOTE learning history affects, of course, how
I learn. I think. That’s effective for me. And I say my
preferences. Oh, yeah, another thing is my beliefs
about kids and how they learn. I feel that kids feel
embarrassed, they don’t want to keep trying, so I try
not to embarrass them. Perhaps my error-correction
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
is less than it should be, because I don’t want them to
feel put down. So that impacts as well. (Tracey)
Personal L2 Teaching: The Significance
of Trial and Error
The teachers also learned about CLT by teaching;
that is, experience in actually teaching Japanese
taught them about what they perceived as commu-
nicative possibilities. They described how they
gained this knowledge through trial and error.
I learned about CLT when I became a teacher, be-
cause I don’t have any language training. So, apart
from experiences teaching English in Japan, I didn’t
have much language teaching methodology at all. So
I think I’ve done a lot of learning in the last couple
of years about how to write an assessment item. So
that’s real experience from the students rather than
something really theoretical. Yes, so trial and error.
(Tamara)
But also I think you learn by trial and error, trying
something. And if it doesn’t work, you change it so
that it will be suitable in the situation. (Alicia)
I think, initially when I started teaching, I did try to
some extent to use [the] communicative language
method, but I’m afraid of, [the lack of a] period of
time, especially this year, when I have virtually no
students with [a] higher motivation level to study
Japanese. Maybe one or two at most. I’m afraid, I
haven’t put much energy into it in developing [a]
communicative style in normal activities. . . . But I
must admit, I suppose, when I did try to use that type
of activity, students are more enthusiastic about study-
ing. I think that’s true. They attempted, particularly
younger students, liked to play games rather than
engaging in formal lessons, you know. But again, you
know, most of them are not really interested in learn-
ing Japanese anyway. So for them, they would rather
play anything, sorts of games than do any sorts of
formal study, whether it will be Japanese or any other
subjects, you know. They are not, on the whole, aca-
demically oriented students in my class, very few, par-
ticularly Japanese classes. (Sean)
It became evident from the teachers’ com-
ments that they perceived both the negative and
positive sides of trial and error learning and
teaching with CLT ideas and concepts. This am-
bivalence was further reinforced with interview
and observation data; the teachers spoke about
the numerous challenges they faced and how
they found it more prudent to implement tradi-
tional practices over innovative ones.
Teacher Development, Inservice Programs,
and Other Teachers
The teachers spoke about learning from these
three sources. Nonetheless, the majority of the
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
LOTE teachers, most of the time, would always
digress to how they relied upon themselves and
their experiences as described above. They ac-
knowledged these sources, yet in the wider inter-
views, it appeared that their own beliefs filtered
what these sources offered, and the context of
their own teaching seemed to determine what
they would use from the sources. What they
picked up is offered next.
The four LOTE (Japanese) teachers who re-
ceived Postgraduate Diplomas of Education were
initially exposed to CLT in teacher development
programs, and the others spoke of inservice in-
volvement. (Note that because about half of the
participants had little to no LOTE teacher educa-
tion involvement, inservices were one way of in-
creasing their knowledge).
Communicative language teaching was the style of
teaching that they favored at the University of
[name], when I studied [the] Diploma of Education.
So everything was supposed to be aimed at develop-
ing communicative language teaching skills. (Sean)
I learned about CLT at a Postgraduate Diploma of
Education course at the University of [name] last
year. It was like a cram school. So I actually learned
when I did my teaching practice at a high school.
(Yumiko)
Teachers who attended a teacher development
course gained some ideas about CLT but did not
seem to have very thorough explanations of what
CLT meant. The teachers who attended inser-
vices related that they had difficulties finding the
time necessary to implement the classroom activi-
ties that they learned there.
So I think most inservices are giving us techniques
which are really encouraging students to use the lan-
guage they know and encourage them to learn from
each other. Yeah, they are not teacher-oriented. It’s
more group work-oriented and interaction. But every
time I go to inservices, I think, “Oh, I should use this.
I should use that.” And then, sometimes when I get
back to school, I just don’t have the time to plan all
those things. (Tamara)
One teacher lamented the fact that she could
not go to a workshop while school was in session.
These days we can’t go in school time. It’s terrible.
And it was so busy after school. So I haven’t been to
any workshops at all. There was one that I was invited
to after school, but it was only discussing exam pa-
pers. It wasn’t a workshop. From the [region], they
haven’t given any. There are some for beginning
teachers, but not for experienced teachers. (Jane)
Regardless of their preservice backgrounds,
the teachers found an additional source in other
teachers. In particular, the majority said that
511
watching good and bad teachers and learning
about their experiences was quite influential.
I was teaching Japanese without having any training
at all in teaching a foreign language. And the other
teachers on the staff helped me. And I started to go
to inservice trainings, seminars, and I enrolled in a
course for 1 year at the University of [name]. It was
supposed to be the course about how to teach Japa-
nese, but it was also to upgrade Japanese language. A
lot of it wasn’t actually how to teach Japanese, but it
was still a good course. (Is the teacher Ms. [name]?)
Yes, she is a good teacher. Ms. [name] showed the
model of communicative method in her teaching
style. I was able to see what [a] communicative lan-
guage teacher was supposed to be like. So I could see
how I should be teaching. (Margaret)
I think over the years, you see good teachers and you
see bad teachers. And you develop your own methods
according to what you see. So I learn more by exam-
ple than I learn by reading a book. And of course, we
must always adapt to the environment that we’re
teaching in. You know, that students in every school
differ and you must adapt your methodology to suit
the students where you are. (Jane)
Summary
The way that these teachers made sense of
their L2 teaching and learning was based on
their personal experiences; little that we found
showed development of their approach within
any type of program or inservice. Although the
teachers said they learned about CLT from oth-
ers by attending teacher development programs
and inservices and by watching other teachers,
personal L2 learning and teaching experiences
filtered through as the primary variables that
nurtured their beliefs, knowledge, and practices
in L2 teaching and learning. It is interesting to
note that these personal experiences seemed to
lead to more global beliefs about what they per-
ceived as L2 teaching and learning, and those
beliefs did not necessarily include CLT. In the
final analysis, the teachers were reluctant to give
much credibility to what other teachers or lec-
turers said. In this study, our attention was fo-
cused on how these teachers developed their
own personal understandings within their teach-
ing and learning situations and through their
individual beliefs. There was a tendency for
some teachers to rely on what they thought they
saw some teachers in various classrooms do, and
they rarely indicated that they discussed ideas,
notions, and perceptions concerning CLT with
their colleagues or university classmates. The
teachers in our group learned many lessons
about L2 teaching from trial and error in their
512
teaching experiences. Their own classroom suc-
cesses and failures influenced the development
and efficacy of their use of CLT. The classroom
experiences of these LOTE teachers (in the
roles of teacher or student, or both) revealed
their beliefs about L2 teaching and learning in
general (and in many cases CLT played a minor
part, if any, within their L2 learning and teach-
ing repertoires). In short, beliefs formed from
personal experiences monitored what the teach-
ers knew and what teacher practice meant to
these participants.
DISCUSSION5
A recent special issue of The Modern Language
Journal entitled “How Language Teaching is Con-
structed” provided an academic perspective on
the topic (VanPatten, 1997). In the analysis pre-
sented here, an attempt was made to understand
L2 teaching from the teachers’ perspectives, espe-
cially with regard to CLT. Together, the data set
highlighted the beliefs, knowledge, and practices
of these 10 Japanese LOTE teachers. We offered
glimpses into how these participants understood
L2 learning, L2 teaching, and general teaching
and learning notions. The interplay among the
issues was complex, yet it was a complexity that
these participants dealt with daily.
The beliefs, knowledge, and practices of these
teachers created webs of tension that intensified
the act of L2 teaching and learning for the par-
ticipants in this study, regardless of the number
of years of experience in teaching and (L2)
teacher education background. Additionally, the
information from this study provided evidence
from the L2 community that supported Pajares’s
(1992) 16 fundamental assumptions about teach-
ers’ educational beliefs. The data here confirmed
the tendencies reported in general education
studies and described their manifestations, using
information from the L2 teachers’ interviews, ob-
served classroom instruction, and completed sur-
veys. In the discussion that ensues we seek to give
(partial) answers to our three research questions,
discuss what was learned by investigating them,
and develop questions concerning them and
their answers. Finally, we offer ideas for future
research.
What Are Japanese LOTE Teachers’ Beliefs
and Knowledge About (Communicative)
Language Teaching?
By using three data sources, we learned that
the teachers in our study held four conceptions
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
about CLT. They believed that CLT (a) empha-
sized communication in the L2, (b) relied heavily
on speaking and listening skills, (c) involved little
grammar teaching, and (d) used time-consuming
activities. These conceptions were not static; how-
ever, numerous difficulties challenged them, and
it was the difficulties that helped give meaning to
and clarify the four conceptions. Through the
difficulties, we learned to view CLT as a fluid
concept that the LOTE teachers were still devel-
oping, and we acknowledged the practical ramifi-
cations of their use of CLT. The teachers knew
CLT was part of their practice of L2 teaching
within this Australian context. Nonetheless, the
extent (or development) of CLT as part of their
L2 instructional repertoires was related to their
own perceived conceptions, understandings, and
challenges.
The interview data highlighted the fact that the
teachers believed CLT was possible, even though
it was evolving and time-consuming. The observa-
tion data revealed the teachers’ reluctance to im-
plement either interactive or innovative prac-
tices, whereas the survey data showed that they
had tendencies to use both CLT and traditional
(form-focused, teacher-centred) teaching as-
pects. Together, all three data sets uncovered the
complexity teachers faced in defining their CLT
knowledge, sharing their CLT practice, and ten-
dering their CLT beliefs. Through this study we
have learned that practice and theory for these
L2 teachers created tensions that not only chal-
lenged their conceptions but also affected their
actions in their learning environments. The data
analysis and presentation articulated what teach-
ers thought and, as much as possible, we avoided
comparing their conceptions with other defini-
tions, views, or policies. By so doing, we hope we
have begun to create a practical database for CLT.
There are some further questions for future
study that need to be asked with regard to the
answers to the first research question. How much
time do teachers think it will take to complete the
evolution of CLT? How do teachers consciously
understand their fluid conceptions of CLT? How
do they feel about their conceptions of CLT? To
what extent do teachers want to implement CLT?
How would reflection on these and other issues
affect teachers’ conceptions of CLT: their beliefs,
knowledge, and practice? How do teachers think
their beliefs about L2 teaching interact with their
conceptions of CLT? How would teachers react to
seeing or hearing their own ideas about CLT pre-
sented in narrative form? These and other ques-
tions provide ample fodder for eventual study.
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
How Do Japanese LOTE Teachers Implement CLT
in Their Classrooms?
We learned that these LOTE teachers imple-
mented CLT sparingly in their classrooms. Al-
though the participants said that they wanted to
teach Japanese for communication and priori-
tized speaking and listening over writing and
reading, in their classrooms they explained the
Japanese language in English and promoted dis-
crete-point grammar and vocabulary learning at
the expense of interactive, negotiated, and inter-
preting activities. They reported that they had
little time to create activities that promoted the
acquisition of Japanese. We learned that evolving
CLT conceptions constrained and influenced L2
teaching and learning.
It is interesting to note that the teachers re-
ported that CLT involved little grammar learn-
ing. Nonetheless, a major challenge mentioned
by many of the teachers pertained specifically to
grammar instruction. Just what was grammar’s
role? They said they did not know how to handle
grammar in their classrooms, especially when, ac-
cording to their perceptions, guidelines, scholars,
or policy-makers suggested that grammar was not
an integral CLT component. These teachers pro-
vided evidence that not only did they have diffi-
culty ignoring grammar in what they perceived as
CLT, but they had a further problem with how to
teach it because most believed it was important
for language learners. Regardless, in the class-
room it was not unusual to see teachers present-
ing grammar explicitly, in English, and adhering
to texts that were grammatically based.
Celce-Murcia (1991) acknowledged “that TESOL
methodologists have not offered consistent ad-
vice to teachers about the role of grammar in
language teaching over the past 25 years” (p.
462). LOTE methodologists may have a similar
problem. Not only are there conflicting practical
issues pertaining to grammar (highlighted by
these LOTE teachers), but there are also conflict-
ing theoretical issues in the literature as well (for
discussions, see, e.g., Celce-Murcia, 1991; Larsen-
Freeman, 1991). Finding a means for both prac-
tice and theory to work together and improve the
learning and acquisition of L2s may be one chal-
lenge that practitioners and theoreticians can
work on together. Nonetheless, the place of gram-
mar within CLT needs some type of attention
from the practical perspectives of these LOTE
teachers.
Further questions promoted by the concerns in
this section include, among others: To what ex-
tent do teachers think they implement CLT? How
513
would teachers classify various happenings (ac-
tivities, strategies, techniques) in their classroom
when videotaped? How would teachers complete
a study to demonstrate how CLT is implemented?
Do teachers find the challenges in promoting
and implementing CLT too numerous to over-
come? How can teachers explicitly detail their L2
instruction? How do teachers evolve from a gram-
mar-oriented classroom to a communicatively ori-
ented one? What CLT activities support language
acquisition and learning from a teacher’s per-
spective? How would teachers clarify the role of
grammar in CLT if pressed?
How Are Japanese LOTE Teachers’ Beliefs and
Knowledge About (Communicative) Language
Teaching Acquired and Developed?
We learned that the Japanese LOTE teachers
in this research found out about CLT individually
and personally. Although they stated that pro-
grams, inservices, and other teachers influenced
their teaching, they readily offered evidence that
it was their reliance on themselves that deter-
mined to no small extent their understandings.
Even when reporting that they watched other
teachers or included other teachers as a learning
source, they seldom described in any detail these
conversations with their colleagues. In essence,
they watched good and bad teachers and decided
for themselves what good and bad practices were
with regard to the particular observed strategy or
activity. Challenges also played a role with teach-
ers in acquiring and developing their CLT acu-
men. The LOTE teachers’ CLT beliefs, knowl-
edge, and practices were not complete and
continued developing, by the teachers’ own ad-
mission. They appeared willing to pursue their
understandings of CLT. Just how they pursued it
would be worthy of in-depth case studies that
monitored them daily.
Individual, if not isolated, stances provided a
gatekeeping element for what these L2 teachers
learned and how they learned it. The analysis
provided sufficient evidence to substantiate one
of Pajares’s (1992) fundamental assumptions that
“beliefs are instrumental in defining tasks and
selecting the cognitive tools with which to inter-
pret, plan, and make decisions regarding such
tasks; hence, they play a critical role in defining
behavior and organizing knowledge and informa-
tion” (p. 325). Participants in this study relied on
themselves, and their descriptions and actions
reflected their understandings not only about
CLT but also about general L2 teaching as well.
The LOTE teachers’ instruction was guarded by
514
their beliefs and actions and guided by their per-
ceived constraints and possibilities.
Richardson (1994) wrote, “Teachers make de-
cisions on the basis of a personal sense of what
works, but without examining the beliefs underly-
ing a sense of ‘working,’ teachers may perpetuate
practices based on questionable assumptions and
beliefs” (p. 6). This leads us to some additional
questions that require perusal. Whose perspec-
tive of questionable assumptions and beliefs
should guide a study? How would teachers feel
about examining their beliefs? How would the
university handle teachers studying academi-
cians’ beliefs, knowledge, and practices concern-
ing CLT? Do teachers see a connection between
how they acquired their (CLT or L2 learning and
teaching) beliefs and how they teach? How do
teachers select what they learn from their experi-
ences, from their preservice or inservice pro-
grams, from the literature? How do students per-
ceive CLT in the classrooms of these LOTE
(Japanese) teachers?
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The issue of L2 teachers’ beliefs, knowledge,
and practice is complex. The nuances and sub-
tlety of how these notions interact is elusive, if not
evasive. We attempt to highlight the L2 teachers’
perspective and offer a glimpse of CLT from prac-
titioners’ understandings. Floden (1997) sug-
gested that
tensions among educational purposes are revealed as
we attempt to reach practical accommodations. It is
helpful to see these difficulties clearly. We need, how-
ever, to build on these insights, pushing beyond
merely saying that our work is hard. We need to
investigate particular promising approaches, and to
pursue analyses that show why things are hard, in the
hopes of gradual, but significant, improvement. (p.
283, italics original)
We hope that the current article provides not
only a view of practical accommodations, but
also a clear description of what is hard about
understanding and implementing CLT. Further
research that includes participants who repre-
sent more Japanese LOTE teachers, other LOTE
teachers, and various LOTE teachers in other
countries will help show the difficulties of teach-
ing and learning, and theory and practice. In
addition, it will be important to investigate just
how individual teachers interact with their vary-
ing challenges within particular contexts. Klein-
sasser (1993) is one of the few researchers who
studied just how differing school contexts influ-
The Modern Language Journal 83 (1999)
ence L2 teachers’ beliefs and practices. Further
inquiries need to continue uncovering, examin-
ing, and clearly articulating the multiple layers
of understanding beliefs, knowledge, and prac-
tices. Moreover, other data sources and varying
analyses will provide further insight into the in-
teractions of beliefs, knowledge, and practice.
Such multiplicity and diversity will allow for both
perceptual and conceptual information (see dis-
cussion in Kessels & Korthagen, 1996) that can
truly offer possibilities for significant, gradual
improvement that is needed in L2 education at
all levels. In revisiting some issues in his seminal
piece Schoolteacher, Lortie (1998) developed his
claim “that considerably more research is
needed on teachers and their work” (p. 161).
We would only add that this includes research,
in its various forms, on L2 teachers and their
work as well.
NOTES
1 The data for this article were originally collected for
an MA thesis (Sato, 1997). Since that time, the data have
gone through many extended analyses and the manu-
script has gone through numerous revisions (by both
the MA student and the thesis supervisor). We are grate-
ful to Mary Roe and Donna Foss for their critical reflec-
tions and insights on earlier drafts. Yet the responsibility
for the manuscript remains ours. We also wish to em-
phasize that this manuscript was written with the intent
of sharing it with the L2 teacher education community.
This is important to note, as Glesne and Peshkin (1992)
reminded us that we need not only to consider the
audience for whom we are writing, but also recognize
that writing for a particular audience may create some
limitations. Relying upon Van Maanen’s (1988) work,
they wrote, “how does the projected audience shape
both the form and the substance of the researcher’s
product? The researcher may use tables and charts with
one audience, but not with another. Or the researcher
may use a disciplined-based language if writing for col-
leagues, but not for a more general group of people.
Researchers tell different things in different ways to
different people” (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992, p. 154).
For this manuscript, we chose narrative to present our
findings. We saw our task to articulate clearly the various
issues for the L2 teacher education community so they
could understand where we were situating ourselves
with regard to the study, how we completed our study,
and how we viewed our understandings of the findings
and implications. We hope we have accomplished this
by writing in a way that includes the community’s par-
ticipation in actively reading the text and negotiating,
interpreting, and expressing its many meanings.
2 We are aware of the work of Clark and Peterson
(1986), who wrote one of the first reviews of this area of
scholarship. Yet, Pajares (1992) included this work, is
Kazuyoshi Sato and Robert C. Kleinsasser
more recent, and integrated more thoroughly the work
completed since the 1986 publication. We are also aware
of the work of Carter (1990) and Elbaz (1991).
3 The analysis for this article scanned the data for
tendencies of issues regarding teachers’ years of experi-
ence. Overall, the findings appeared to be scattered
throughout the data set regardless of years of experi-
ence, showing few tendencies that actually contrasted.
This should not be surprising as Huberman’s (1993)
study of 160 secondary teachers found that teachers in
varying stages of their teaching career mentioned simi-
lar tendencies related to their teaching careers. More-
over Huberman reported some challenges when trying
to predict various stages of job satisfaction: “In some of
the statistical analyses conducted in the study but not
reported in this text, we did arrive at reliable predictions
of levels of satisfaction at the beginning of the career.
We were able to situate the determining factors at mid-
career, and to account for the reasons given by teachers
who were approaching retirement. But we were not able
to predict the intermediary phases of the career. This
suggests that professional career journeys are not ade-
quately linear, predictable or identical—-are often, in
fact unexplainable using the tools at our disposal” (pp.
263–265). Nonetheless, perhaps a secondary analysis of
this data set using the ideas suggested by Kinginger
(1997) may provide additional insight and more thor-
ough understandings. This notwithstanding, the data
offer evidence from teachers who are dealing daily with
CLT issues and provide documentation of teachers’ be-
liefs, knowledge, and practices.
4 We are concerned with some of the current writing
being completed in L2 education regarding L2 teach-
ers. Its lack of detail and rigor in (research) methodol-
ogy and its tendency to talk about the data rather than
presenting them are two areas that are particularly trou-
blesome. We are mindful to acknowledge that we are
reporting our data through our perspectives (see discus-
sions, for example, in Eisner, 1991; Glesne & Peshkin,
1992; and Wolcott, 1990), yet, we also wish to highlight
the teachers’ voices more completely in order to codify
their perspectives (beliefs, knowledge, and practices).
We wish the manuscript to represent the story and text
we create by relying heavily on the teachers’ data. To
have the teachers explain what they meant in providing
the data would require another further data analysis
and writing of another manuscript. Only the teachers as
the researchers working with the data could truly en-
lighten us as to what they meant or why they said what
they said (and then we would still have to be careful of
the bias within that type of analysis and presentation).
The approach we take here appears to differ from what
some people within the L2 community do. We can only
agree with Wolcott when he states, “Qualitative re-
searchers seem particularly vulnerable to the ten-
dency—and urge—to go beyond reporting what is and
to use their studies as platforms for making pronounce-
ments of what ought to be. A critical divide separates the
realm of the observable from the realm of values about
good and better. This is not simply the matter of a big
leap. You cannot bridge the chasm between the descrip-
515
tive and the prescriptive without imposing someone’s
judgment, whether originating from the people in the
setting (‘What we really need around here . . .’), from
expert opinion (‘If these people knew what was good for
them . . .’), or from the researcher’s own assessment (‘I
cannot help wondering whether . . .’). True, there is an
evaluative dimension to all description, but the antidote
is restraint” (pp. 55–56).
5 We approach the discussion and conclusion with
trepidation, as does Wolcott (1990, p. 55). Yet, the pro-
fession still demands some type of closure, so we attempt
it. We return to the three research questions that out-
lined our narrative and follow Wolcott’s advice to review
“succinctly what has been attempted, what has been
learned, and what new questions have been raised”
(Wolcott, 1990, p. 56).
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